IN OUR GLOBAL ECONOMY WHAT IS “LOCAL EXPERIENCE” AND DOES IT REALLY HAVE ANY VALUE?

There was an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman, a Canadian, a Cypriot, a Pole, an Egyptian woman and a bloke from Russia… it could be the start to a really great joke but actually, it’s just a few of the people we’ve recently found jobs for.

As a recruiter, it’s boring to be beige, to swim the same lane and simply look for clones and repeat that process over and over again. If you take the time to widen the net and open your doors to a more culturally diverse talent pool you’ll soon find out that there’s a big world out there and it’s full of awesomeness.

So how justified and genuine is the feedback “sorry you don’t have any local experience”?

Unfortunately, it’s always been a response for many but all of a sudden the market seems to be closing the doors to even more overseas candidates who tick all the boxes except the local work experience one.

We live in a global society and we need a global perspective. It seems that we all love an “Aussie” with overseas experience, the big 4 CA who was lucky enough to spend 2 years working in London, but why is it a such a struggle for the candidate with a similar profile from the UAE? Are we all just intrinsically xenophobic in this country or is there some logic to this issue? It seems that other major cities outside of Australia have a very different approach to recruitment and many of the finance teams are often made up of people from different countries. It’s a strategy that is very prevalent in the UK market, not that i’m biased but it’s great to come from a country that recognises these skills are transferable and can be “translated” across borders. Its’ grossly disappointing and as a recruiter extremely frustrating that on one hand Australia prides itself on being diverse with a multicultural society, but on the other hand diversity is not always reflected in the composition of it’s workforce. It’s about time that Australian companies finally took note of these international viewpoints in order to make sure they’re not overvaluing this local experience too much.

Business skills with true value are completely transferable if you were a fly on the wall of any recruitment meeting or interview or you’d probably hear something about transferable skills and the value that’s put on them. Unfortunately what seems to have been missed is the transferable nature of global experience. Just over 12 months ago, the Australian Financial Review raised concerns that proposed changes to the visa system could have a negative impact on Australian companies, given that more than one-third of ASX 100 listed companies had foreign-born CEOs. So, it seems that there may be an inconsistency at play here. On the one hand, Australia’s top companies have frequently opted to bring in expertise from overseas for C suite roles. On the other hand, this recognition of global, transferable experience does not seem to have had the same impact at other levels within Australian company structures.

If we were all to take a step back and think about what’s really important when we look to hire it should be apparent that there’s a big trick being missed in all of this. Apart from the academic rigor at the world’s leading universities, being immersed in a completely different culture allows you to improve the sort of EQ and soft skills that are now invaluable in modern Australia.

Whether we like it or not we’ve created a global society and therefore we need business leaders and an Australian workforce that itself is genuinely global. There is only value in hiring highly skilled candidates from overseas and as we’re all looking to innovate and disrupt we should embrace new ways of thinking from all corners of the globe.

It’s a fact that diversity is one of the key priorities in many organisations and it’s a known fact that companies with diverse teams perform better, they are more creative and staff engagement is generally improved. And yet it seems many organisations are still challenged to achieve effective diversity outcomes time after time after time.

When was last time you recruited an overseas candidate?

It’s really refreshing when I work with a client who genuinely embraces diversity and it’s these clients who are working smarter in what is a talent-short market. It’s with this approach that they gain access to an even bigger pool of talent.

Diversity should be on every employer’s agenda already, it’s not just the right things is the smart thing and without a doubt, companies perform so much better with a more culturally diverse workforce.

You don’t know what you don’t know, never was there a truer sentence ever spoken. The real question is, knowing we don’t know everything, what’s the best way to learn more?

The answer is ironically obvious, you need to look outside. I’m not talking about some existential vantage point, I mean literally, look outside…